ewbaptist
Mr. CompletelyI shared this privately before, but I just got the okay to share it in public. The Bluegrass Archive is online with a website and everything. This is a MASSIVE trove of legal live #bluegrass recordings from earliest days right up to now, which you can download and listen to for free. It is one of the greatest achievements of the fan-driven #music archiving community I've ever seen. I contributed a small number of filesets out of the thousands here. #music
Note - this is a living project, so check back for additions as often as you feel like. In addition to fresh recordings of new material, older stuff surfaces all the time, and now there's a single repository for it. If you have any high quality recordings not found here, let me know and I'll help figure out how to get them uploaded.
Comm Radio Environment Network@mrcompletely I've tried to click on a couple of the entries, but the first one just had someone talking and the second had nothing on it. I'm not sure I'm doing the right thing. Do you have any advice please? Not very techie.
@oneloveoneplanet click on the artist name. It's an odd UI, not one I made. The music is all for download, not streaming, so you'll need to figure out how to play the resulting files.
@mrcompletely ok thanks; I’ll have another go.
New to collecting live #bluegrass? Overwhelmed by the choices? There are a lot of right answers, but here are some easy favorites to start with:
- Acoustic Allstars jam session sets, especially 1988 at the Birchmere
- JD Crowe & the New South at McCabe's in 75
(these are at least arguably the two most crucial tapes in the canon)
- Tony Rice Unit shows from 1982-92
- Doc Watson any era, but especially Doc and Merle shows from the 70s
- Kentucky Colonels from the 60s
- Bill Monroe early 60s
Savvy95@mrcompletely Don't forget to scour the US Library of Congress for great music, including bluegrass.
gmoke@mrcompletely Thank you and congratualitons.
dpc2@mrcompletely Holy crap 😮 This is like the bluegrass version of Relisten.net, but you can actually download em! Thank you 🙏 Gonna get my fill of old Doc Watson recordings, and then some.
Mike_V@mrcompletely @roland - Abigail Washburn!!! 😀
Världens bästa Kille™
Marcus Adams@mrcompletely This is simply amazing, 🙂
@gerowen enjoy! It's the culmination of years of work by many people
Ogie Ogilthorpe ✅When you said “legal bluegrass” I quickly thought of a new strain of #pot #marijuana #MJ and got excited. Then I read farther and my hopes were dashed.
@OgieOgilthorpe there are already far too many strains coming out all the time for me to keep up with anyway
Mycotropic
zl2tod@mrcompletely
It would be good to implement more indexing, searching and sorting for the archive.
This is the oldest recording I've seen there, and rather interesting:
https://gdarchive.net/Public/Bluegrass/Artists%20A%20-%20K/Flatt%20&%20Scruggs/flatt+scruggs1950-xx-xx-wsm.FLAC16/flattscruggs1950d1/
It would be good to implement more indexing, searching and sorting for the archive.
This is the oldest recording I've seen there, and rather interesting:
https://gdarchive.net/Public/Bluegrass/Artists%20A%20-%20K/Flatt%20&%20Scruggs/flatt+scruggs1950-xx-xx-wsm.FLAC16/flattscruggs1950d1/
@zl2tod I do hope they make the ui easier to traverse, but it's not my project, so who knows!
I don't think I've ever seen either a Monroe or Flatt & Scruggs tape from before that, though either is possible
@mrcompletely
Oh here we go: Bill Monroe at the Grand Ol' Opry in 1946
https://gdarchive.net/Public/Bluegrass/Artists%20A%20-%20K/Bill%20Monroe%20Misc/monroe1946-65.grandolopry.flac16/
Oh here we go: Bill Monroe at the Grand Ol' Opry in 1946
https://gdarchive.net/Public/Bluegrass/Artists%20A%20-%20K/Bill%20Monroe%20Misc/monroe1946-65.grandolopry.flac16/
xs4me2Great! Thanks for sharing!
penguin42@mrcompletely How do they manage to keep this legal - I some recognisable names on there.
@penguin42 all of the most famous names in bluegrass are on it. Live recording and the free trading of those recordings has been a part of the genre since the 1950s. As long as there is no capitalism happening it's all totally above board. This is a huge part of bluegrass culture.
@mrcompletely This is obviously an enormous achievement. Who runs it? I don't see any contact info.
@Jesseabe some volunteers from a private legal live music torrent tracker. I suppose if they wanted their names public they'd be on there, but I only know their login handles anyway
@mrcompletely Thanks! I'm very curious about everything that goes into this.
@Jesseabe well, I'm part of the community that supports the effort and I do know a good bit about it, so I'm glad to discuss or answer questions that I can. But I'm also working today and got quite a few replies to this post so it might not be a fast convo on my end 😁
trisweb@mrcompletely This is absolutely incredible. A treasure trove. Thank you so much for sharing, it's going to make my year as I start listening through the catalog.
Tim Bray@mrcompletely Can confirm. ⬆️
What he doesn't say is a lot of the recordings have superb sound quality. Downloaded a Billy Strings set last night and it sounded wonderful on the big system. Not just old stuff, that Strings set was from last month.
What he doesn't say is a lot of the recordings have superb sound quality. Downloaded a Billy Strings set last night and it sounded wonderful on the big system. Not just old stuff, that Strings set was from last month.
@timbray most are probably at least pretty good. Some of the older and really rare things sound just okay but are posted bc there's no alternative source. But yes a lot of it sounds superb
@mrcompletely @timbray
Is there a "convert the banjo part to tab" button yet? Especially for two and three finger parts from the 1929's? I'd like to have that tab..... ;(
Is there a "convert the banjo part to tab" button yet? Especially for two and three finger parts from the 1929's? I'd like to have that tab..... ;(
kikebenlloch@mrcompletely On a side note, how come years are displayed with two digits instead of four? Are all the recordings from the same century?
@kikebenlloch no idea. Not my UI
@mrcompletely OK, just saying because in general that usually leads to confusion & errors.
@kikebenlloch absolutely. For now you can puzzle it out since bluegrass started in the 1940s and we haven't come back around to those digits yet. But it won't be long! I def agree and would have used YYYY-MM-DD for natural numerical sorting reasons and readability
David P@mrcompletely I look forward to listening to some!
Wildduck@mrcompletely Quelque chose qui pourrait t'intéresser @noodle ?
BK Ryer@mrcompletely whatever the cool bluegrass slang term is for “socially positive historical archive that’s fun at parties”— imagine I said that and a banjo joke.
But 4real this is the internet awesomeness the founders had in mind.
Andy Linton 🇮🇪 
✅@mrcompletely @gnat nothing to see here
Nat Torkington@artnacrea Thank you, sir!
@mrcompletely My grandpa would've loved this. ❤️
SiobhanVohn@mrcompletely this is AMAZING!!! Thank you so much for sharing! 🤩😍🥰
@SiobhanVohn you're quite welcome
blhue (has moved)@mrcompletely I wonder how much of this originally came from #BluegrassBox (a site I operated until certain so and so's forced us to pull the plug). I see some stuff on this list that caused the so and so's to speak with us back when. Wishing them the best!
https://web.archive.org/web/20050211012817/http://www.bluegrassbox.com/
@blhue bluegrass box was a great resource and an inspiration. If you'd like to point out the potentially problematic names I can at least pass that info along though as I've mentioned I am not an admin or anything for this site. Thanks for your work on BGB!
Janis La Couvée@mrcompletely I have a friend who plays bass and bluegrass. I will let her know. Fascinating.
Bishop Of Orange@mrcompletely thank you for this.
Rugged Bot Romeo@mrcompletely this is a thing of beauty! Fantastic!
Runsinthewind@mrcompletely Wow what a gift - thank you so much for sharing 🥳👍